Chapter Text
“—civilians are still advised to stay away from the downtown area. Search and rescue teams are currently on scene—”
Rubble and smoke. The last of the dangerous flames died out an hour ago. Tomura would know. He’s seen Dabi and his fucking overkill firsthand; he’s watched Endeavor’s work, too. There are buildings with structural damage—too much heat wrapping metal—but it’s mostly contained now. Civilian injuries but no casualties. The onlookers were evacuated long ago, and it sure as hell hadn’t been Endeavor’s doing.
Another channel.
“—Number two hero truly gone rouge? Sources from the scene suggest—”
Ridiculous. They didn’t even have fucking footage. Just a stock photo. A shitty one with the stupid, omnipresent grin plastered across Hawks’ dumbass face at that.
Another channel.
”—heroes are currently conducting a manhunt across the city. The villain appears to have escaped with Hawks, though both were reported to be wounded at the time—”
“Wounded doesn’t mean dead,” Toga mutters, tucked away at the foot of the couch. She’s pulled her legs up to her chest, arms curled around her knees. She’s been rocking back and forth since the broadcasts started with Endeavor's explosive attacks and Dabi's furious counter. It’s starting to get fucking annoying. Bumping into his knee once is coincidence; sitting there against his shin is intent.
Tomura doesn’t comfort. He wouldn’t even know how.
“Yeah! Dabi’s a tough guy!” Twice’s enthusiasm overrides the TV. It’s too damn loud, with the idiot perched on the couch arm so close. Careless dumbass. They’re all too close. Don’t they know one wrong move, one accidental brush, and they’re fucking ash? “He’s probably dead in a gutter.”
Fuck.
His neck itches.
Tomura is waiting in queue for another match when the muted sound of breaking glass creeps under his door.
He’s up in an instant, ready to personally decimate whatever two-bit hero has decided to try their hand at taking down the League and interrupt his winning streak. He’s still pissed about having to share his space with Toga, Dabi, and Magne, who either don’t have places to go back to or, in the latter’s case, only have shitty places to go back to. Taking his aggression out on something should be… productive.
At least that’s the bullshit he’ll hand Kurogiri when he turns back up from checking in with sensei.
Naturally, it’s not some dumbass hero but rather the League’s resident asshole.
Tomura flips on the bathroom light to find Dabi sprawled across the small space against the tub with the scent of cheap beer soaking into the tile. Tomura hardly notices over the smell of charred flesh and the sight of blood.
A familiar trio. One that makes him sick, so he scratches at his neck to chase back the memories.
“Hey, creep,” Dabi slurs. He isn’t drunk. Those eyes are too clear for that. Pain, then. Blood loss. The scent of burned flesh shouldn’t be so strong, even if he’s killed someone recently. “Get me another bottle?”
“Fuck you,” Tomura seethes.
The dumbass hisses while he pulls his shirt off. In the washed-out light, the red stain against the left side is obvious. A couple of staples are missing from below his neck, oozing blood in a slow trickle down Dabi’s chest. It’s nothing to match the livid red gash stretching across the unscarred tissue on his side.
It’s bleeding, but it’s shallow enough to survive without further intervention if they stop the bleeding and keep it clean. Regardless, it still isn’t enough blood to put a man like Dabi down.
“Wouldn’t need it if you kept antiseptic here,” Dabi complains.
Tomura glances over his shoulder to see Magne, awake and rubbing sleep out of her eyes. They widen at the sight of the dumbass bleeding on the tile.
“Oh, shit,” she says, easing her way around Tomura, “What happened?”
“Yeah, ashtray,” Tomura agrees, far less sympathetically, “What the hell did you do?”
“’S fine,” Dabi drawls. The shit-for-brains brushes a finger against the side of the gash like he’s fucking curious about why he’s bleeding in the first place. “Just need to clean it.”
Magne takes his shoulder as if to coax him into better light but flinches back the second she touches his skin. Concern knots her brow. “You’re burning up,” she says. That… isn’t right. Dabi runs cool. The asshole has sat next to Tomura to personally bug the shit out of him at the bar enough for him to know that. “Hang on. I’ll get some supplies.”
Tomura shuffles forward in the silence following Magne’s departure, careful of the shards of glass from the broken beer bottle. The air around Dabi is warm like he’s a fucking walking radiator. The smell of burnt skin is stronger the closer he gets.
“What did you do?” Tomura demands again.
Dabi watches him, those dead blue eyes flitting around his face. A smirk tugs at the corner of his fucked-up lips. “Recruiting,” he says, “Fucker had a regeneration quirk.”
Tomura’s scowl deepens, “So this is, what? Kickback from your quirk?” Dabi has a fucking good poker face, but his eyes narrow. Tomura senses the nerve he’s hit and presses further. It’s Dabi’s own fault for playing that mysterious, edgelord bullshit in place of actual answers. Tomura’s the player; he fucking needs to know the party stats and drawbacks ahead of time. “So you’re useless in extended fighting,” he needles.
Tomura is fast. Has to be with his quirk, according to sensei and common sense. He also isn’t expecting someone half dead and bleeding from a chest wound to move, much less spring to his feet like a fucking snake.
Dabi towers when he isn’t hunched over like a damn zombie. The hand curled warningly around his shoulder is hot, just on the edge of uncomfortable. He’s smoking from the joints where pale skin meets the scars, but it looks like he may not even be aware of the spike in temperature.
Whatever. Tomura has been burned before. It hasn’t scared him in a long time.
Besides, he already has four fingers wrapped around the offending wrist.
The glare on Dabi’s face is vicious, furious. The first spark of passion Tomura has seen from him. Even his bullshit about Stain had been drawled out in that lazy monotone. “Huh, look at that,” Dabi seethes, “I’m still on my fucking feet.”
He says it like he means more than just some brush with a stubborn recruit gone wrong. Tomura’s eyes flick to the scars—the way they wrap over Dabi’s broad shoulders and down his back. Around half his skin is poorly treated, constantly aggravated scar tissue. Even if the nerves are dead, Tomura has already figured Dabi’s pain tolerance to be astronomical.
(The sort that’s used to this sort of shit, wears the proof of it across his skin, and thinks fixing himself up in the bathroom alone is perfectly acceptable. The sort that can take fucking bullets from a hero’s gun and not scream.
Fucking parallels.)
Dabi’s lips curl into a smirk that pulls at his staples, “That’s right, creep.”
Tomura’s scowl ebbs into a bland glare. He’s gotten the information he wanted. (More than he wanted, really, because clearly Dabi also wasn’t what someone wanted either.) “Sit down, dumbass,” he orders, “You’re overheating.”
Dabi blinks. Another point for Tomura: apparently, he really hadn’t realized his skin was smoking. “What—”
Tomura is pissed, tired, and irritated that he’s probably already missed the next game. He doesn’t really have the time or patience for this shit. “There’s no point in leveling up a character just to waste them by throwing them prematurely at shitty matchups,” he drawls, “So sit the fuck down and stop overusing your quirk on pawns. If you’re useless, it’s because you’re too damn reckless.”
Dabi stares. The rage settles back into something entirely different. Not quite that dead-eyed look but somewhere between. When the smoke stops, Tomura carefully peels his fingers away from Dabi’s wrist.
Tomura all but rolls his eyes and shifts around Dabi, who only moves to brace himself against the sink. That extra little burst seems to have taken the last bit of fight out of him. He doesn’t open his dumbass mouth while Tomura turns on the cold water, but he feels Dabi’s eyes on his back.
He scratches his neck.
Magne comes back with a bottle of Kurogiri’s highest proof. Tomura decides that they’ll need a healer at some point because he isn’t willing to listen to Kurogiri bitch about the loss of his favorite stashes again.
“Get in the water,” Tomura demands.
Dabi… listens without a word. It’s nearly enough to throw him off. The others do as they’re told, barring Toga’s flights of fancy, but Dabi argues whenever the hell he doesn’t like something Tomura says and usually has some smartass, dry comment even when they agree. He still fights against authority, even if he went and signed himself up for this shit in the first place.
Tomura scowls suspiciously.
The fucker may have a pain tolerance on par with Tomura’s, but there’s no mistaking the relief in eyes while he sinks down, pants and all, into the cold water. Magne, who’s been fishing around in the arm full of shit she’d brought back, pulls out a sewing needle and picks up floss that Tomura doesn’t remember being on the sink the night before.
“So… does this actually work?” she asks.
Dabi snorts, leaned back with his arms draped over the side of the tub to keep the wound above the water. “Works fine if it’s clean,” he mutters.
Tomura isn’t surprised that Dabi barely flinches at Magne’s first attempt at stitches after the wound is cleaned up. He’s half asleep by the time Magne finishes and sits back on her heels. “He’s cooling down,” she reports over her shoulder.
Tomura nods, impatiently tapping four fingers against the sink, where he’s perched to maintain his space. “If you ever pull reckless shit like this again,” he warns Dabi, “You’re cleaning up your own fucking mess yourself.”
He gets up, ready to leave, and makes the mistake of glancing over again.
It’s not a smile, exactly. Too small and exhausted for that, but it’s…
It makes Tomura’s neck itch.
“Got it, boss.”
Tomura slams the door shut behind him.
“They haven’t been caught yet,” Spinner says. His fingernails are digging holes in the back of the couch. Tomura hates this new hideout. It looks enough like a house it makes his skin crawl, but he likes the fucking couch. He thinks about reaching for Spinner’s wrist for spite while he switches to a new station. “That’s good, right?”
Compress, self-appointed voice of fucking reason in Kurogiri’s absence, speaks up, “They’re both recognizable, but Dabi is accustomed to that. He’ll likely seek out a safehouse for the night.”
A hand on his shoulder. Tomura fucking flinches. Knows Compress feels it and glares warningly over his shoulder. His face feels bare without Father, but Dabi’s shitty timing is a universal constant apparently.
“You want to lose that arm, too?” he hisses. It would be easy. Effortless.
Thoughtless.
(One mistake. One little mistake. Tomura has made it before. Don’t these dumbasses know that?)
The grip tightens. What passes as tight. Tomura jerks his shoulder, and it still comes loose easily.
Shit. He only notices he’s scratched the blood out of his neck when he sees it dripping off Compress’ pinky. “Kurogiri worries about that habit of yours,” he says. The mask is off. Those brown eyes aren’t soft but fuck.
Tomura scratches harder at something he knows he can’t physically relieve. Better than reaching back out of spite.
Compress doesn’t flinch away. Isn’t scared off by Tomura’s temper and his fucked-up face. It makes him angry the same way he’s been angry about stupid Dabi, Hawks, and their collective penchant for shitty, reckless decisions for over an hour now.
Sensei and Kurogiri are the only ones who don’t flinch away from him. Sensei, Kurogiri, and now these dumbasses, who don’t seem to get it. They’re all just tools. NPCs. Pieces on a board to level up until he can throw them at the big boss battles. Whatever the hell they think they have here—comradery, safety, fucking friendship—it’s an illusion.
They’re replaceable, objectively, and they know it. It’d be a pain the ass, but he could do it.
But they’re also outcasts. They’re so disgustingly desperate for a place to belong—where no one gives a damn about fucked-up faces, who they are, or shitty backgrounds—that they can’t see the obvious. Even that fucking hero. Tomura knew he was full of shit the second he told Dabi to bring him in, but he’s the same. The only difference is that Hawks doesn’t completely get it.
“—official statement from the Hero Commission disavowing any action made to assist in the escape of a villain with an outstanding warrant. The head of the Commission is set to address the public this afternoon, pending updates on the case.”
Yet.
There’s a media storm brewing on the channels that aren’t warning civilians away from the battle zone. Doesn’t matter if they return Hawks now. His own people are ready to roast him alive for daring to save a fucking villain’s life.
He’s already one of them now, as far as most are concerned—has been since he plummeted out of the sky with Dabi wrapped up safely in charred feathers that barely slowed the fall enough to not be instantly fatal. The Hero Commission will happily throw him under the bus to try and get that little shit further embedded in the League, and it doesn’t even fucking matter to them that, even if they win the end game and clear his name, it won’t change a thing for Hawks.
Because he’s their fucking tool.
…oh.
Oh.
That’s it, isn’t it?
Tomura turns off the TV. He does grab Spinner’s forearm, but he’s careful to keep the pinky raised. If these fucking idiots think so little of being close to him, why should it be his problem? “Get the car.”
Dabi is both the best and worst recruiter Tomura has ever heard of.
He’s selective. He doesn’t bring Tomura any two-bit idiot off the street. While that means the League takes on quality, they’re lacking in numbers. Clearly the dumbass doesn’t get that they’ll need pawns to throw at the heroes at some point. He may not have spouted off Stain’s name since that his reckless idiocy nearly burned him up in the old hideout’s bathroom, but he’s still riding some fucking high horse about who gets into the League and who doesn’t.
And maybe Tomura lets him carry on with only obligatory complaint because it’s actually working. The ones Dabi brings him are eager and loyal. Turned away by a society that wouldn’t bother to lift a finger to help them, save to damn them in the first place.
If All Might still inspires that sort of loyalty and ideal in normal people, Tomura will take the misfits, castoffs, and unwanted and do the same. At least they know the world for what it really is.
(He doesn’t think about it much, that look on Dabi’s face back then—that it only took scolding the dumbass for pushing himself to the brink of death to switch from ‘creep’ and ‘mophead’ to ‘Shigaraki’ and ‘boss.’
Doesn’t think about how fucking familiar that is either.)
Still, this little gem, Tomura could safely say he’s pleased with.
Hawks is a liar, but he’s also not much different than the rest of them. He’s far more useful to them alive and in the League than dead or against it. Far more useful than some ungrateful, loudmouth brat and his over-the-top quirk. Any mistake he makes is instant game over, too: either the number two hero is put off the board, the heroes get sick of trading good information for shitty information, or…
There are moments.
It’s a rare one that Dabi leaves the hero alone among the core members of the League. Tomura can never quite tell if that’s for Hawks’ sake or theirs. After Magne’s death and with Kurogiri temporarily beyond their reach, the bastard has become annoyingly invested in his job leading the Vanguard, and he’s made it clear that he doesn’t entirely trust Hawks either. But then, Dabi has also taken to picking at the hero like he wants to know just how well that shinning image holds up to pressure—like he still wants to think there’s some ridiculous example of shinning good out there, hidden in the dregs of humanity. Dabi is an idealist in some ways, and it really pisses Tomura off.
(Or maybe he’s just caught the scent of something nostalgic.)
Tonight though, Dabi is out. With Toga and Twice occupied with some shitty TV drama, Spinner hung over on the couch, and Compress on a supplies run, they’re alone for the most part. Tomura expects the hero to approach him—suspects that the point of this stupid charade is to get close to him, so he waits—makes himself seem open by stalking up to the roof.
The hero doesn’t disappoint. “Nice view, huh?”
It’s a shit view. The building isn’t as tall as the next ones over, so they’re stuck with a piece of washed-out sky and a few billboards. It’s dark though. Enough that any hero capable of flying won’t see much, even of Hawks’ bright hair and red feathers.
Tomura ignores the chatter and reads over the next advertisement.
“So I’ve been wondering,” Hawks continues, sauntering up close enough that Tomura can feel the warmth coming off of those wings. Arrogant little thing. But then, there’s a sharpness to his eyes, under that plastered-on reckless, air-headed look. “You don’t really like Stain’s whole shtick, do you?”
“Oh, I love Stain’s philosophy,” Tomura says with false cheer. It’s not even technically a lie; he’s so vengefully pleased that that arrogant, self-righteous fucker’s legacy has been absorbed by Tomura and his League. Toga, Spinner, and Dabi are his now.
“Sure,” Hawks shrugs, “It’s pretty on paper, right? But I get the feeling people like All Might are more of a goal to you than an ideal.”
Oh. Oh, this is going to be fun. Either Hawks has very good intel, or he’s as sharp as he is clumsy. Either way, there’s a timer on these dialogue options.
Tomura smiles, wide and grotesque enough that most people recoil. That Midoriya brat had been shaking under his hand in seconds. Hawks doesn’t even blink. “Why, I could’ve sworn Dabi thought you agreed with Stain,” he drawls with that same goading, fake innocence, “Have you been lying to him?”
Hawks has the fucking nerve to laugh like an air-headed dumbass. He brushes his fingers through his hair and smiles. “Who ever said you can’t like something and disagree with bits of it?”
And there it is, isn’t it? The chink in the armor. He says it so casually, but that’s Hawks’ game. Play the fool long enough, and he’s easy to look over as the standard, flashy hero with a quirk that keeps his head in the clouds.
This man isn’t an idiot, but he’s not as grounded in his beliefs as he seems to think, either. Nobody is that willing to throw themselves on a pyre.
Tomura can use that.
“And what ‘bits’ are those, exactly?” Tomura presses, eyes shamelessly intent on the hero’s face.
Hawks blinks, thrown off. Then he grins, half tucked away behind the collar of that ridiculous jacket, “I show you mine, you show me yours?”
Is…
Is that little shit flirting…?
What the fuck?
Whatever Hawks is trying, he passes off Tomura’s increasingly angry silence with a shrug. “If people want to be pros for the money and glory, seems to me like that’s more of a symptom than the problem. Even All Might makes a metric fuck ton off merch and appearances—if you want a job as a pro, that’s what you have to do. Killing a bunch of heroes won’t change what made it that way.”
“You had some better reason then?” Tomura sneers, pitching his tone toward vicious mocking, “The greater good, right? That’s why you’re here? To change the world, even if you have to play nice with filthy villains to do it?” Angry people tend to be honest people, after all.
The problem is that Hawks is fucking difficult to make angry, but the flinty look in his eyes is a start. Tomura touched a nerve, but he doesn’t think it has anything to do with the ‘greater good’ bullshit. Motivation, then, but nothing like All Might and his fucking enraging altruism bullshit.
“Nah, nothing like that,” Hawks says with the most fucked-up excuse of cheery a smile Tomura has ever seen, “I’m probably the worst sort of hero to Stain.”
Worst?
Money? Tomura doubts it. Money would be a shitty motivator to someone convinced they’re likely to die on this crusade in the near future. Glory, then? Not that, either. One wrong step in the case that Tomura demands he go public, and Hawks’ name is lower in the dirt that anyone in the League, as not just a villain but a traitor.
So it’s somehow convictions—a lack of his own, maybe.
Doesn’t it always boil down to that bullshit in the end?
(And isn’t it fucking annoying to be put on the same ground as a hero, even in something like Stain’s shitty, self-righteous logic?)
The hero is watching him. Waiting for whatever glimpse of information he thinks he’s earned by trading his own secrets. Fine.
“Heroes like All Might,” Tomura sneers, “are a fucking crutch.” Hawks blinks. The smile seeps off his face. The little shit is actually thinking about it. How sweet. “You would know, though, wouldn’t you, hero? How many people look the other way and just assume you’ll solve all of society’s pesky little unseemly problems for them?”
There’s that look again. Hawks is hiding something. “’Unseemly problems,’” he repeats, eyes flicking back to the hideout’s stairwell.
“That’s right.” Tomura’s grin widens, malicious and amused. “Something always falls through the cracks, doesn’t it?”
He expects defiance. Anger. Denial. Anything typical of a standard hero biting his own fucking lip to keep from defending the system he’s willingly risking his life and name for.
Hawks stands there in the dark, washed out and pale in the light that barely reaches them. Instead of looking at Tomura, he tilts his face toward the shadows cast by his own collar. He looks muted—duller than the fucking peacock he plays himself off as.
He looks disgustingly honest in that moment.
When he speaks, it’s a quiet and bitter, “Yeah, it does.”
There are moments when Tomura wonders how easy it might be to pull the number two hero down to their level—to ground that golden bird to the earth like the rest of them.
(There are moments when he thinks Hawks is already sick of the taste of the fucking dirt.
It should piss him off. It does, but mostly because it’s infuriatingly interesting.)
Tomura leaves Spinner with the car. With Twice and Toga leading the heroes on a fruitless chase in the opposite direction, Tomura moves through the radius around the former battleground unnoticed. It’s reckless with Kurogiri currently out of reach—far more than he should do for the pair of dumbasses.
They’re tools. NPCs. Disposable, if inconvenient at this point.
Clearly even the heroes already get that, if they’re so willing to toss one of their own to the wolves just to try and squeeze out the last little bit of usefulness he has for this monumental fuck-up of an infiltration mission.
Thing is, it really pisses Tomura off to be compared to the Hero Commission.
Besides, the League is his, dammit, and no one breaks his shit without his say so. Anyone willing to try should’ve just taken a fucking look at Overhaul. Tomura always pays his losses back three-fold. Seems even his shitty band of rejects and assholes agree with that.
“C’mon, move your damn feet,” comes a hiss from an alley, quickly followed by a thump and a gruff, ”Fuck.”
Dabi.
Tomura wouldn’t have heard it if he didn’t know exactly the sorts of rickety, structurally fucked locations the idiot tends to hide out around. Always so keen to fuck up the arena for his own advantage.
He knows better than to step out openly while Dabi has intentionally backed himself into a place with limited entrance and wreckage dangling overhead that could be brought down with a well-placed blast of fire. He keeps a wall between himself and Dabi and announces himself first, “Answer your damn phone when I call you, dipshit.”
An intake of air and the sound of cloth shifting come from around the corner. “Shigaraki?” At least the idiot has the good sense to sound suspicious.
Tomura moves into the mouth of the alley. He glances at the pieces of wall, half-collapsed between them. It’ll hold for now. His eyes flick to Dabi next, where he’s braced against the study wall of the opposite building. He has one of Hawks’ arms draped across his shoulders. Even at a distance, it doesn’t take a fucking genius to tell Hawks is dead weight. The remainder of feathers still attached to his wings droop, limp and not even long enough to brush the ground.
Dabi’s eyes are bright. Wild. Like a fucking fox ready to eat its own foot off to get out of a trap.
Tomura touches a piece of loose rubble. The aggressive hunch of Dabi’s shoulders eases as he watches the rubble dissolve. He’s confused. Cagey. Exhausted, if he’s been lugging around the weight of fully-grown man for the past hour. “Why are you—”
“I don’t want hear a fucking word,” Tomura seethes, digging around in the pocket of his jacket. He hates the gloves—only wears them because even he needs a few hours of fucking sleep without dissolving the damn bed from underneath himself—but Dabi isn’t a close-range fighter, and Hawks is completely unconscious now. “The only reason you aren’t cleaning this shit up yourself is because you didn’t fuck it up in the first place this time.”
Endeavor did. Though, apparently, he’d gotten far more than he’d bargained for, attacking a member of the League in broad daylight. Tomura almost grins at the look on the bastard’s flaming face when red feathers appeared in the way of the burst of blue and red flames.
The fact that it's recorded on national television...
The gloves fit uncomfortably over the last two fingers of each hand, though, so Tomura’s sour mood is cemented. He hates the muted feeling--hates that it’ll take at least six seconds to get them off if they’re caught. Dabi wisely keeps his mouth shut for once. He’s putting off heat again, but it’s nothing like that night in the bathroom.
The desire to wring that scarred neck ebbs, if only just a little bit.
(Less than a year ago, he’d already have attempted to commit homicide out of sheer frustration. Less than a year ago, the fledgling League hadn’t really been Tomura’s either.)
He trades Dabi a phone for Hawks. “Call Compress back to the car,” he orders, “Tell Spinner to get ready, and roast any idiot dumb enough to interfere.”
Toga and Twice are more than a match for any of the two-bit heroes who took their bait. They’ll be back in the hideout by nightfall, so there’s no point in cutting it short. Let them break the heroes’ confidence.
There’s no way to know if Hawks’ body can physically stand the stress of teleportation that isn’t as seamless as Kurogiri’s warp gates. If he’s been walking, even with Dabi’s help, there probably isn’t any major spinal injury, which is at least one less annoyance to deal with.
Hawks isn’t especially tall, but he’s heavy enough this whole fucking disaster just has an added layer of irritation.
At least the car isn’t too damn far. If it were, Tomura isn’t sure if he’d have the self-control to not take a detour to let out some aggression.
Hawks’ head lulls against his shoulder. Even filthy and streaked with blood in places, the hair against his neck is too fucking soft, like the feathers that brush against his forearm. A muscle twitches irritably in Tomura’s shoulder. Dabi purposefully doesn’t look at them while he texts Spinner and Compress. “He saved me,” the dumbass says cautiously, like the words taste foreign and sweet on his lips and all the more bitter and bewildering for it.
Tomura narrows his eyes warningly, “No shit.”
He knows what Dabi means to say, but Tomura has already beaten him to that conclusion and moved on. Hawks is theirs now, and it’s all the fault of the Commission and that royal fuck-up they’re calling number one these days.
(He also knows what Dabi doesn’t say, but Tomura doesn’t think about useless shit like that—hasn’t since he was a pathetic, starving brat, shivering and bleeding alone on the fucking concrete—and he’s not about to now.)
Dabi meets his gaze, unwavering, even at the sight of Father. He opens his mouth. “And you—"
Tomura cuts him off, “I said not a fucking word.”
It’s pragmatic. He’s their leader now, so he has to be bothered to do the shit that earns him the same loyalty as All Might and his nauseating little pest of a successor. Only Tomura’s job is so much easier with his awful shitheads. All he has to do is extend a metaphorical hand—the smallest facsimile of basic human decency—and they’re his, unlike the heroes at the whims of the masses.
Hawks shifts with a grand sense of ironic timing, even unconscious, and settles with his exhales gusting irritatingly across Tomura's collarbones.
“Whatever you say, boss,” Dabi drawls. The tone isn’t quite the usual flat one, but the dumbass still dares to slide the phone into Tomura’s coat pocket.
“I’ll fucking kill you,” Tomura snarls, aiming a kick at the bastard’s shin. If he misses, it’s the fault of the fucking dead weight he's carrying.
Dabi doesn’t look that concerned, and it royally pisses him off on top of his already foul mood.
Dabi wisely makes himself scarce for the three days it takes for Hawks to wake up after treatment. (Tomura isn’t fucking stupid enough to keep going without healer since half of his League are prone to coming back bloody and bruised.) Tomura takes his anger out on plotting and brutal rounds of multiplayer games.
He ignores that food keeps showing up at his door. He doesn’t give a shit if those idiots want to play house, but he isn’t interested.
(He only grudgingly bothers biting when caffeine starts showing up with plates.)
When he gets word that Hawks is awake, Tomura bides his time another two days. Better, he thinks, to let the news settle. After all, most channels are still talking about the hero’s less-than-metaphorical fall from the graces of the masses and his speculated ties to the League.
Better yet, recruitment has boomed in the past five days. Their numbers are soon to include a handful of former less-than-morally-perfect vigilantes and sympathizers, who are so outraged that a hero as popular and beloved as Hawks would be ostracized by the Commission so easily. It’s better than anything Tomura could’ve anticipated.
All that leaves, of course, is to find out where the disgraced hero himself stands.
He intentionally leaves Father in his room for this meeting.
Tomura finds Toga sitting on the chair by the bed. Small, red feathers flutter at her back, a pair of false wings. “Hey boss!” she chirps with an overzealous wave that has Tomura scratching at his neck, “Aren’t they cute? I bet they could cut through concrete.”
Tomura looks to the hero, who’s propped up against the wall. With most of his feathers currently assembled against Toga’s back, the few remaining on his are hardly visible with the way he’s slumped. “Only if I’m controlling them,” Hawks corrects. There’s that fucked-up excuse for a smile again. “But yeah.”
The TV is on, muted. It’s a rerun of the Hero Commission’s official statement and denouncement of Hawks. Apparently they have "proof" he's been meeting with the League.
It's almost cute how smart they think they are. As it is, it's mostly just infuriating that they think Tomura would fall for it.
“Toga,” he cuts in, “Leave. We need to talk.”
Toga frowns, “But—”
“Now,” Tomura orders.
She pouts and sighs theatrically, but she skips toward the door anyway. The red feathers move from her back to gather in a pile next to Hawks. “Bye bye, birdy!” she waves, “Don’t make the boss mad, or I’ll have to cut you, okay?”
The door shuts behind her with a click.
Hawks holds Tomura’s gaze but wisely drops the forced smile. “Are you here to kill me?”
“That depends,” Tomura replies, pointedly looking toward the broadcast, “You’re useless to me as an informant now.” He means it, in more ways than one. Embedded this deep in the League, a true spy is a security risk that they can’t afford. However… “Whatever bullshit you’ve been telling Dabi, you aren’t a killer either, are you? So what, exactly, am I supposed to do with you?”
“You’re the boss, right?” Hawks shrugs. He eyes the pile of feathers and decides against it. He looks tired. Worn down. A ghost. A bird that was never quite allowed to fly that hit the fucking pavement. It’s pathetic. Unseemly.
(It’s so fucking familiar.)
“Why did you become a hero?” Tomura demands, no room for lies or half-truths now.
Hawks opens his mouth. Those pretty gold eyes glance at the broadcast with his dumbass grin featured on screen, and he winces. He sighs, shoulders hunched and defeated, and looks at his bare hands. His laugh is bitter. Angry. Lost. “I didn’t even choose this, you know,” he says, “I had a knack—saved some people—and they noticed.”
(Too fucking familiar.)
Tomura ignores his own irritated noise and digs at his neck. It should be so fucking easy. He has all the cards in his hand now, but…
That fucking bird has the same damn hand in a different suit.
“I just wanted to help people,” Hawks sighs. It’s so fucking close to All Might, Tomura’s calm very nearly fractures along the fault lines completely.
It’s the eyes that hold him back. They're the same words, but they’re somehow worlds apart. All Might suffered. Oh, All Might suffered, but he couldn’t see the world for the disgusting piece of complacent shit he helped make of it. That self-righteous way he looked at Tomura back at the USJ—the same fucking way Stain looked at him—like he was trash, told him that much.
Hawks stares at him like they’re the same.
But they are though, aren’t they? So similar—two sides of the same coin, two peas in a fucking pod—that it’s disgustingly hilarious.
(Oh, little bird, have you ever tasted the dirt.)
Tomura laughs.
Hawks frowns, fight coming back into his eyes. Oh, good. The little shit hasn’t even realize he’s just cleared this level yet, has he?
Tomura calms himself and settles down in the chair Toga abandoned earlier. He props his feet up on the table and retrieves his phone from his pocket to boot up a loading screen. “If you want to help people,” he sneers, the words sharp and mocking as the tilts his head toward the door and the hideout at large, “start with what the heroes let fall through the cracks.”
Tomura sees Hawks’ eyes widen. He ignores the hero as though he never noticed, even if he hardly bothers to hide the smirk that stretches across his lips. Oh, the little bird is still loyal to his masters.
For now.
Thing is, where the Commission only knows how to choke back on the leash to keep their own under control, Tomura has had to learn how to lead without a fucking leash in sight. This game isn’t necessarily new, but it's one that Hawks doesn’t stand a chance at winning.
Birds want to fly, after all, and Tomura expects this one has only just gotten his first taste of the sky. What will he do, Tomura wonders, when he realizes that it's villains who let him fly.
Hawks changes the channel once he realizes Tomura has no interest in continuing the conversation. He’s asleep again by the time Tomura finishes fortifying and upgrading his base camp.
Dabi steps in not long after, plates in hand. Tomura scowls at them. “If you leave that shit in front of my door again, you’re buying the fucking replacement dishes.”
The asshole is clearly back to himself. He rolls his eyes and sits against the wall next to the foot of Tomura’s chair, plate braced on his thighs. “Haven’t bought anything since I was sixteen,” he drawls.
Maybe that would mean something if Tomura had any fucking idea how old Dabi is in the first place, aside from some vague assumption of around his own age. Though that would at least explain why the idiot wandered into the League dressed like he climbed out of a fucking dumpster.
Regardless, Tomura doesn’t acknowledge him. Acknowledging Dabi is adding water to a human grease fire. Ignoring Dabi isn’t much different. He cranes his neck up when he’s half-finished picking at his plate to look over Tomura’s phone. “You actually like that base building shit?”
“Fuck you,” Tomura mutters, too busy decimating some arrogant little shit’s invading force to bother with attempted murder.
Dabi watches a minute and a half before settling back with a declaration of “boring as fuck.” Says the dumbass who’s only knack is with FPS and party games. Tomura is numb enough to Dabi’s bullshit that he doesn’t notice Dabi’s been thinking until he speaks up, “So you’re keeping him, huh?”
Tomura spares him a glance. He follows Dabi’s gaze to Hawks, who’s rolled onto his side, presumably out of habit to avoid crushing the small bits of wing and feather still attached. “He’s useful,” Tomura declares.
Dabi leans back with that odd look in this eyes. Tomura has only seen it a handful of times since that night, months ago. It still makes him itch. “Fucking hero."
It isn’t an insult this time. It isn’t quite an endearment, either, but it’s well on the way.
If Tomura wasn’t certain he’d already completed enough of Dabi’s companion missions to gain his loyalty, he might doubt the risk he just took. As it was, well…
Hawks is theirs now. He'd proved that much when he'd interfered with Endeavor's attempt to catch Dabi despite no longer needing an in with the League.
Tomura is willing to bet that it's only a matter of time before he recognizes that himself.